AI on Set: A Working Crew Guide
This is not the work of an AI enthusiast who learned about film production. It is the work of a film production professional who learned about AI. That inversion shapes every assessment in these pages — written by a working DP who's been figuring it out on real jobs, with a career that depends on getting it right.
Not hype.
Field notes.
This isn't a tech blog post about what AI might do someday. It's a department-by-department breakdown of the tools that are shipping right now — what's actually AI, what's just sophisticated automation being marketed as AI, and what that distinction means for your workflow.
Written for working crew. Every chapter is organized around a department, not a technology.
And because this industry moves fast, this is a living document — updated regularly as tools change, tools get acquired, and tools disappear overnight.
9 Chapters.
Every Department.
Version 1.1 shipped April 2026 — updated post-NAB Show with new content across four chapters. This is the living document model working in real time: tools announced this week are already in the guide.
Tools change.
This guide keeps up.
This isn't a static PDF you buy and shelve. It's updated when tools change, tools disappear (Sora shut down March 2026 — it's already in the versioning section), and new tools enter the pipeline worth knowing about.
If you find something wrong, something missing, or something new — there's a direct line to Kristian at mediatwins.us. Readers are part of how this stays current.
The FYLM.ai Pipeline.
A complete writeup of this workflow — built from hands-on use, not speculation. How ShotDeck's visual language library feeds directly into FYLM.ai's AI LUT generation to establish your look before you ever touch a grade.
Written for
working union crew.
Very few in the AI content space talk seriously about IATSE, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA implications. This guide does — because knowing the rules matters before you recommend an AI tool to a union signatory production.
Written from inside the guild. The labor context, the jurisdiction questions, the rate implications — covered honestly, because they affect every working crew member navigating this shift.